Chapter 6 - The Call From an Unknown Number

The phone rang while Delaney was sitting beside the narrow window in her temporary room. She had been trying to finish a job application on an aging computer borrowed from the housing clinic. The number was unfamiliar, but that was no longer unusual. Detectives, attorneys, and support workers had been contacting her for days.

She answered.

A man's voice said, "You got out of the docks. Stay out of this, too."

Delaney went cold. "Who is this?"

"People who help you now won't be there forever."

The call ended.

For several seconds she couldn't move. She looked at the door, then at the locked window, listening for footsteps in the corridor. Nothing happened. But the silence reminded her of the moment she'd watched the prisoner lower his head beside the grave.

She called Shaw instead of trying to find the caller herself. The detective told her to preserve the call record and report any further contact immediately. A technical investigator would request the relevant phone records. Shaw did not claim the caller was Gideon Sloane. She only said they had to treat the threat as real until they knew who had made it.

Delaney's first instinct was to leave the room. There was no feeling quite as exposed as knowing that somebody might be looking for you. She had spent eight months learning where she could hide. But leaving without telling anyone would make it harder for the officers already looking for Sloane to protect her.

Mara came that afternoon with a change of clothes from the support office and news about the River Street investigation. The housing clinic had located five more former tenants who said they had never signed the relocation elections recorded in Harrow's files. One woman still had a photograph of a notice taped to her door. Its case number differed from Delaney's, but county records showed no matching closure order for that date either.

"Will they make us testify?" Delaney asked.

"They may ask. You can discuss what that involves with an attorney. It isn't something they should spring on you without preparation."

"If I testify, do people get their homes back?"

Mara shook her head. "Not automatically. Some buildings have changed hands. But the court can address wrongful removals, and recovery of the missing funds is being pursued."

Delaney looked at the computer, where her unfinished application remained open. She'd once believed finding work would be the first step toward another place to sleep. Now she saw how difficult it had been to keep work while hiding in an abandoned boat. Sometimes her clothes had smelled of river mildew. Sometimes she'd missed an early shift because the cold kept her awake until daylight.

"I need to stop living like the next door can close on me any minute," she said.

Mara didn't tell her that would be easy. She helped Delaney complete the application, then arranged a meeting about longer-term housing assistance that did not depend on Gabriel Rourke or his companies.

Meanwhile, Shaw's investigation was moving slowly for reasons Delaney had begun to respect. Financial records required preservation and legal process. The two men caught at the grave had attorneys. Neither was telling the whole story. Sloane's name appeared on Harrow's contracts, but appearing on a contract did not establish that he'd ordered a murder. A jury would need more than suspicion and an attempted burial witnessed from behind a fence.

Gabriel was also cooperating, although his own attorneys sat beside him through every interview. Delaney learned that several members of his organization wanted to search for Sloane themselves. Gabriel had refused. Any private retaliation, he told Shaw, would endanger witnesses and make it easier for the defense to attack the investigation.

Delaney appreciated the choice without mistaking it for innocence. He still commanded people who would have been willing to act violently. The fact that he could stop them did not erase the years in which he had benefited from that power.

At a second interview, Shaw asked Delaney about the older man's appearance. She mentioned his thick shoulders, gray temples, and bare ring finger with the pale mark beneath it. That detail made the detective pause.

"You were looking closely," Shaw said.

"I was trying to remember someone who might kill me."

Shaw didn't smile. She added the description to her statement. They were comparing it with photographs and records from Harrow. In one employee photograph, Gideon Sloane wore a wedding band. Removing it before the grave could have been an attempt to avoid leaving a recognizable object behind, but Shaw cautioned that the reason was unknown. Delaney was willing to leave that question unanswered. The larger ones already occupied too much space in her head.

Two days after the threatening call, Ortiz asked Shaw and Mara to attend a meeting about the relocation accounts. Delaney was invited because her forged form was among the samples under review. The bank records obtained so far showed repeated transfers from Harrow to Bend Access Consulting. Some of those transfers followed the submission of relocation claims by less than a day.

"So whoever billed the company already knew where the money would go," Delaney said.

"That's one possibility," Ortiz replied. "The timing is consistent with a prearranged process, not individual payments being negotiated after people moved out."

A former Harrow payroll administrator had contacted investigators through counsel. She said she had kept copies of scheduling emails and reimbursement spreadsheets after she grew concerned about the irregular invoices. Her records were being collected and checked against the originals. She was frightened of Sloane, but she had agreed to give a statement.

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The email archive contained one detail Ortiz wouldn't yet discuss by telephone. It wasn't a new company, another missing tenant, or another threatened witness. It was a message sent in Gabriel Rourke's name shortly before someone tried to bury him.

Delaney left the meeting knowing two things. The call to her room had not silenced her. And someone had apparently tried to use Gabriel's own business correspondence to explain why he ought to disappear.